Reviews of The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet
As the reviews come in, this post will be updated
Early pre-prints of Mattias Desmet’s new book have reached the hands of people who’s work I follow.
The latest (and my current favorite):
The above review is by Harrison Koehli, host of MindMatters and editor of Political Ponerology, a substack based upon this important but little-known book:
Harrison compares two books. Together, they provide a good “map” into how and why we can find ourselves ruled by the worst among us.
Meanwhile, my hero A Midwestern Doctor has also agreed to review the work and he posted the following as part of a recent article:
I was recently requested to complete an early review for Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Due to limited time, I normally turn these requests down, but given the importance of this work (Desmet was the one who coined the term “Mass Formation” frequently discussed by Robert Malone and Steve Kirsch), I chose to do so and am presently drafting that review.
One of Desmet’s central theses I strongly agree with is that when you have a society where everyone is disconnected from themselves and everything around them, it becomes dramatically easier to control a population and give birth to a totalitarian state. A significant portion of this disconnection is a direct result of our digital age encouraging us not to be in the direct presence of each other, but instead to reduce the human experience down to ideas and points of data.Somewhat analogously, it has long been observed in medicine that one of the most important things a physician can do is to (appropriately) physically touch their patients, as this form of human connection can be profoundly healing. This touch often significantly improve diagnosis or treatment, to the point I believe it is fundamentally impossible to treat many medical conditions without touching your patient.
Since technology has entered the field of medicine, more and more of the classic doctor patient relationship and physical examination has been replaced by disconnected technological edifices which are fundamentally not healing. Thanks to Covid, we are now entering the era of Telemedicine, and are well on our way to the era of AI medicine where the last vestiges of a human connection can be eliminated from the practice of medicine.
Not unexpectedly, in many modern medical schools and postgraduate physician training programs, touch is now only focused upon from a standpoint of legal liability, and this frequently creates the situation where I am often astonished to learn that doctors I meet do not know how to “touch” their patients. In short, I believe that this loss of touch is one of the direct causes of the dehumanization that has swept the medical field and significantly lowered the quality of medical care we have access to within the conventional system.There are many reasons for this loss of ability to connect with yourself and others. For example, in the medical field, the concept of physician “burnout” is frequently cited, and this process directly correlates with the loss of a physician to feel alive or connect with their patients.
I would argue that when you have subtle damage to your nervous system (such as from poor quality processed food, poor sleep, environmental toxins reducing microcirculation necessary for proper nervous function or chronic inflammation within the nervous system from vaccinations), the ability to appreciate the subtle aspects of life drops off. As you become more dead inside, you gradually become receptive only to strong stimuli and likewise as a doctor fail to recognize many of the subtle signs of physiologic dysfunction that were discussed in the previous article on Justin Bieber’s vaccine injury.
Many of these nervous system dysfunctions are permanent complications of injuries from a medical treatment. Others, such as sleep, can fluctuate on a day-to-day basis. Because some are easily changeable, I always find it fascinating to observe how my ability to experience the subtleties of life fluctuates on a day-to-day basis.Pornography (and more violent sexual practices) is one example of where a complex subtle experience has been replaced with individual strong stimuli designed to elicit a conditioned dopamine response for individuals (which at its conclusion often leaves you feeling more dead inside than you did at the start). The same principle can also be observed throughout the mass media, a significant portion of the entertainment industry, and sadly even our society conditioned notions of "romance“.
Similarly, modern processed food emphasizes strong synthetic and addictive flavors fatigued tastebuds can overtly recognize. In contrast many traditional cuisines outside the reach of the processed food industry utilize a variety of more subtle flavors that form an incredible constellation of taste many industrialized tastebuds barely can even recognize. I have repeatedly observed that the preference between these two styles of cuisines is a direct reflection of the current life within one’s nervous system.In summary, I hold the firm conviction the solution to many of our social ills is to become more alive inside so that we can become more connected to the people and environment around us rather than simply relating to the mental ideas they all represent. Similarly, one of my greatest fears is that we are moving into a transhumanist era where our species will largely lose the ability to feel.
In the coming days, I will further explore this theme as I delve into the global disconnection that Desmet argues sets the stage for Mass Formation Psychosis. Hopefully this was an enjoyable segue to a rather depressing topic.
I am looking forward to reading the book myself. I have the impression that Mattias Desmet thinks these recent mass formations have more spontaneous, “self organizing” basis than I currently do… I smell poisoner rats! But I want understand his case.
I plan to update this post as more reviews come in, and pre-order the new book from Cheslea Green Publishing.